Always Christmas

Always Christmas

Somewhere.

Kiribati. Kiritimati. Christmas Island. The world’s largest atoll by land area. The greatest population of sooty terns. Millions. Two thousand kilometres from Hawaii. Thousands more from anywhere else. The highest point is eleven metres. The perimeter runs for 150 kilometres. I was going to walk around it.

Five thousand or so people live at the London end. There’s pretty much no one anywhere else. Across the mouth of a gigantic lagoon, beyond the manta rays, spinner dolphins and rolling waves was Paris point. That would be where I’d start my journey.

I would say that the sun was relentless but it was just the sun being the sun. I had nowhere to hide. No cover.

I began the journey in bare feet.

I was carrying eleven litres of water on my back. A twenty kilogram pack. This was a desert.

I walked for fourteen hours a day. In times past nuclear bombs exploded off this crystal coast.

I harvested coconuts to stay alive. I ate peanuts.

After bare feet I switched to thongs. A crab stole one in the night.

I went back to shoes.

A turtle that thought it was a tortoise. Miraculous hydration I could pluck from trees. A handful of raindrops under the full moon. Cracking disks of rocks along the Bay of Wrecks. Birds swooping this silent coast. A shark in the shallows.

Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday.

Fifteen people offered me rides over the last 26 kilometres. They withdrew in shock when I said that I’d walked from the other side.

Why?

Because it’s beautiful.